Tyler Jorgenson 0:01
You’re listening to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. This show was created for entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers and dreamers who want to learn from the experts of today and drastically shortcut their own success to build a business that supports their dream lifestyle. Since 2011, Tyler Jorgensen has been interviewing business thought leaders from around the world a serial entrepreneur himself. Tyler also shares his personal insights into what’s working in business today. Welcome to biz Ninja, entrepreneur, radio.
Ramon Ray 0:40
Everybody, this Ramon Ray founder smart hustle media smart hustle.com Thanks for joining me for another exciting interview, podcast discussion. If you hear the sound of my voice, or if you’re just seeing my face, that’s really a problem. But if you’re hearing the sound of my voice, give us a like on iTunes on Stitcher. Share this with somebody else comment, be involved. Engage, say what you like if you don’t like just whispered quietly, but I’m so glad you’re here again. Ramon Ray, with smart also media at smart hustle.com. We are here with Tyler Jorgensen. I’m probably pronouncing the last name a bit off, but he’ll do better than me. All right, Tyler. Thank you. So Tyler, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. And take two three minutes and share with us a bit about who you are personally, Tyler, and what your company does, and many people may already know Tyler from your famous and amazing podcast. So open up a bit.
Tyler Jorgenson 1:27
Tell us awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. Super excited to be here. My name is Tyler Jorgenson. I am the host of biz ninja entrepreneur radio on ABC News and on podcast wherever you tune in and listen to those. I’ve been doing that podcast since 2011, with guests like Tim Ferriss and Neil Patel, all the way down to the everyday next door entrepreneur as we really just focus on the entrepreneurial journey. And so we’ve been just sharing those stories for almost a decade now. I’m a father of four a husband and a evangelist for people living their best life. And so what I really try to do is through entrepreneurship, I think that people can create the life that they dream of. And so our agency is for sale, digital marketing, where we help people scale their physical product brands so that they can increase revenue and increase profits.
Ramon Ray 2:15
I love it. That’s powerful. And curious, Tyler, you know, I’ve interviewed people for so many years as well. I’m a bit more scatterbrained than you. So podcasts YouTube offline online, but I love interviewing people. But what have you learned? I’m just curious. I know for me, I say this tongue in cheek and in quotes. I feel like the smartest man in the world. And I would guess any of us who either a do podcast or no Seth Godin, he was a book packager. I never knew what it was. But he like would just think up topics and publish them how to escape, how to catch fish, how to make water bottles. I only understood that later on. That’s what he did. So I’m like, that’s how he has all these stories and knows this stuff. So are you finding that since you’ve interviewed so many people that kind of you have a pretty good, well rounded overview of business and life? Is that are you seeing that?
Tyler Jorgenson 3:00
Sure. Yeah. I think one of the reasons I started the podcast, or started the radio show, it started as an hour long live show on an NBC channel, right. And now it’s a 30 minute pre recorded show on ABC. But one of the main reasons I started it was just to be able to talk to people, I was an entrepreneur running an e commerce business from home, I didn’t have like that office atmosphere or those networking experiences. And so I wanted to talk to people in business. And it was, it wasn’t always easy to get in front of people or to ask questions like to try to get on the phone with somebody like a Tim Ferriss is not easy. But when you have a platform, he actually requested to talk to me. And so then I got to talk to him for you know, 3045 minutes about anything I wanted to ask him. And it was this amazing opportunity to just learn so much more. And you know, what the biggest thing I learned from interviewing over like 300 people at this point is that the entrepreneurial journey is really pretty similar for everyone. And it’s hard when you’re at one of those hard obstacle facing stages. It’s easy to romanticize that other people’s journeys are easier, or that they had some kind of a shortcut, but they don’t. And they did it. The Long Way is the shortcut. They just stuck with it. Most of the people that I talked to that are that are really successful, they just stuck with it through the hard times. Or they gave up so early, but like they knew when it wasn’t going to work. Like there’s this is this weird paradox, right? You have to stick with it during the hard times. But you also have to know when you’re chasing a losing horse, right? Like when something’s not right. So it’s this weird paradox. And we’re most people that I talked to, that gets stuck in the middle, they stick with it for the wrong things. And then they don’t go after they don’t and then they don’t stick with it when it’s the right thing. Right. And that’s the challenge that deserves a
Unknown Speaker 4:44
jump to the gym.
Ramon Ray 4:48
I started during that when everybody somebody said a mind blowing moment. I can’t repeat exactly what the short, the short cut is a long journey, something like that people get it. So, Tyler thank you for that. That’s powerful. Let’s dive right into four sale. Tyler for those who have physical products, if you want to just define how you define that a bit, give us an example of that. And then I would just love to hear from you, man, what are you telling your clients? What are the things you’re like, Ramona, wish everybody would stop doing this? What are the things they should be doing? And I’ll ask these questions over again. Yeah. about those things. So for sale, unpack again, give us a scenario metaphor or realistic of a customer, you’ve helped, as it were, so we can set the stage for to visualize what you’re doing.
Tyler Jorgenson 5:25
Yeah, no problem. It’s interesting, because in my world, when I say physical products, everybody knows what that is. Right? But you’re right. Sometimes, if you’re new to the space, it’s kind of weird. Just think anything that if you ordered it online, that it would get shipped to you. Right, like, so not ebooks, or coaching or expert businesses, that kind of stuff, which are great, but that’s just not our niche. So we help people brands that make stuff, sell more stuff. That’s it’s pretty much straightforward. And at that point, so and really isn’t
Ramon Ray 5:53
the smaller guy or gal or do you specialize in helping Kohl’s or Macy’s? I’m thinking of the answer. But just to clarify even is it for that lady who’s making crocheted yarn? Has she did her first mitten? Or is it for the lady who has maybe she sells 10,000 a month? I’m just curious. Is there any Yeah,
Tyler Jorgenson 6:09
so definitely, we are not a Kohl’s or Macy’s top level like Ogilvy and Mather, like type of a big agency, right? We’re definitely working, we really step into most companies that are in that 10,000 range, like you’re doing, hey, you’re doing 510 $20,000 a month, and you want to get into the six figures plus a month. That’s our sweet spot. Now, if somebody is a like a $5 million business, but they’re selling on Amazon, and in wholesale, and they don’t have a direct to consumer line, we also do that, we really, for most of our clients, we are the digital arm of their business, because we do everything from content creation, social media, posting, and management, offer creation, we manage their sales, funnel processes, and there’s their e commerce stores. And we do all of that, so that they can focus on building products, and doing the things they need to do to run the business and manufacturer. So you asked for an example, we have a a home decor company that was only doing about five or $10,000 a month on their on their store, they had some drop shippers and some other b2b relationships. Well, in three months, we took him to $190,000 a month in sales. And it was simply by saying, Hey, you know what, you guys are good at making stuff. We’ll go sell it. Wow. And that was it. And so we just focused on taking their offers and putting them in front of the marketplace, both on Facebook and Instagram, and as well as on Google and all those and being in all those places. And once we find winning offers, it’s how many other places can we find to put this and we’ve done that for a few brands over the past. Little while it’s been really, it’s really fun to take someone from doing a few thousand dollars to a few hundred thousand and within a short timeframe and watch as the excitement and energy enters the business again,
Ramon Ray 7:45
of course and curious to do that. Where do you find that? Why are people turning to you, Tyler because there’s that thing between two people saying I hear a lot of smaller businesses. You know, Facebook has a whole program and they’re great people, DIY DIY, do it yourself, do it yourself? Where do you advise that there’s that delta, as it were, between that business owner that maybe let’s talk to the smaller side of the success, they’re struggling a bit they’re doing it themselves, which people can do Google ads, spin zillions, there’s YouTube videos. What? at a high level, I don’t need every detail, but a high level, of course different, or why should people think of you know, let me outsource this to another company? Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson 8:18
So the first half of that question is when should someone or why should someone outsource? Right? The question is, it’s time versus money. Okay, if you have more time than money, do it yourself. spend that time learning those things and go do it yourself. Because you have more you have the time to deploy. But if you have if your business is going well, or if you have the resources you want, then you should become the expert on your business and on your product and on those things and pay experts to do what they’re experts at. So one of the main things is that I’ve personally launched over 176 brands, I’ve built and sold five of my own. I’ve owned businesses in multiple industries, I’ve owned gyms and restaurants and supplement companies and apparel brands like I’ve done. I’ve walked the walk, right. Right now I’m not currently doing any my own because when after I sold my last batch of stores, I said I’m going to focus on the agency and helping other people do it. And so the difference is that it’s kind of like hiring an expert that is only a textbook expert. Right? I this is what I do. I help brands and products go and we are really good at going from zero to a million mark. Right? And other people are really good at saying hey, I take you from one to 20 right. And that’s that’s not what we’re great. We’re really good at getting people into that million dollar and we were really trying to get to do is get people to that 500 plus thousand dollar a month range.
Ramon Ray 9:40
Yeah, and I know exactly what you’re saying, Tyler, I have the same experience as a speaker. You know, I do quite a bit of speaking speaking for years, and I can, I don’t know I’m vibing with you. I can kind of smell what it takes. I know what it is because I’ve done it. But I know you know some others. They’re kind of like you can just smell the textbook ones like you probably watched a few YouTube videos to tell people how to speak but have you ever Get on the stage for Have you ever done your own PR? You probably haven’t. So there definitely is a big difference. Tyler, let’s step back a bit in any 2345, high level things that you’re thinking, Ramon, here’s the key of what it takes to start to grow your business. And I’m sure a lot of it’s in the execution, the genius of your brain. But one of those things that you find many people are, this is what you’re missing. Anything that comes to mind, Tyler?
Tyler Jorgenson 10:24
Yeah, I think most people, when they’re looking at their marketing for their business, they’re too flat, they need to be at least three dimensional. So there should be a you need to have a campaign that’s simply for customer acquisition. And that can be you can do giveaways, you can do low ticket offers, you can do big discounts, but you have to do things that get people that are buyers, into your business, get buyers, right, it’s the coupon in the mail, it’s all the same stuff. If you look at brick and mortars, this is what they do. They get buyers into the store. Right, then you have to have a customer Ascension plan. And that can be your email marketing, your retargeting your, you can do SMS marketing back to people how you get your past buyers to buy again, right. And then the last piece is, you have to be spending a part of your budget on branding and community. Most small to medium businesses don’t have the money to buy a Superbowl ad. Yeah, so you’ve got to buy Superbowl ads in your niche. And that means you’re spending money on Facebook ads, targeting your niche that don’t have a direct call to action, but just make people aware. And so if you can do if you can own your niche, people will recognize your brand when you make that offer. So I think any business needs to have those three things, they need to have a customer acquisition plan, a customer Ascension plan, and a branding and Community Plan.
Ramon Ray 11:42
I think that is powerful Kalyn, my guess. But as I tell my wife, I don’t mind putting my foot in my mouth either all the time. Guess what you’re gonna say if I’m wrong, Sam wrong, I no problem at all. But my guess is that many of us small business owners that we spend a lot of time on the first one that that’s the trigger the knee jerk what everybody wants to do new customers, new customers, new customers, boost posts on Facebook, boo boos on Facebook. But we don’t the time don’t know how, you know, what we think we don’t have the time to make the investment is you kind of said first, right? The shortcut is a long journey. I already have customers, how do I get him to come back? Well, other things you said is that am I accurate? Am I off that? Yeah,
Tyler Jorgenson 12:15
no spot on, I think there’s only three ways to make more money in business, right? more customers more money per customer, or lower your costs. That’s it. And so one of the biggest things I see people do is they spend too much time trying to lower their costs, like you have to monitor that side of your balance sheet you have to, but that that’s not going to save your company, it’s not going to grow your business, right? That’s a little bit that can become a scarcity mindset, if that’s the only place you’re putting your energy. So there has to be a plan on how am I going to get a customer? And what is the lifetime value of that customer by me selling to them over and over. And so one of the mistakes that people make in customer acquisition is that they’re not willing to make an offer that is more powerful, meaning Oh, no, I sell a widget, I’m not going to give a discount. And I’m not gonna offer a bonus or incentive. Like you might have to take a little bit smaller profit on the first order for you to accelerate your business, and then have that Ascension plan in place.
Ramon Ray 13:12
Well, that is powerful. And I think that going back to those who are looking for agencies, there’s no agency like Tyler’s but you know, to help us understand that there’s a number of agencies that are slimy, they’re terrible, Tyler, I know you’re not that. But it’s easy to drop x thousand dollars a month or a few hundred a month, whatever the number is on an agency to help us in our business. Any guidelines, either just sniff out and smell the ones to run away from, or any tips that hey, here’s an agency that maybe good and baby prefer warning signs for those that they should run from anything you’re saying. I think
Tyler Jorgenson 13:42
success with an agency starts with the business owner before the agency. So for example, if you’re saying, Hey, here’s my website, I’m going to go to someone who’s going to run Google ads, they’re going to run Google ads. But if your offer isn’t good, you’re not going to sell anything. Or so same thing with Facebook ads like, Oh, well, I’ll give an example. I had a client where we were trying to run. We wanted to run Facebook ads to one of their offers. Instead they like Hey, no, let’s run ads to this offer be like well offer B is a long sales process. It’s a much harder sell. Like it would make more sense to really push people to your lower ticket offer. And then nurture them through emails and through where you’re already really strong and communicating. It’s like no, no, no, I want to push this other one. No agency can overcome that business owners strategy mistake. So in order to have good success at an agency you have you can’t expect that agency to be your Savior. Hmm, they are an amplifier. That’s it. So you have to know your strategy, know your plan, know the reasoning, understand marketing of what you’re doing, then go to an agency and say, Hey, please help me get this to the masses. Instead of saying, Hey, I’m gonna hire. I have a website that doesn’t convert. I’m not tracking anything. I don’t know my lifetime value. My cost But I’m going to hire an agency and expect that they’re just going to magically have it make money. Like, you have to geek out on the simple stuff before you even talk to an agency. And if an agency is willing to take your money without you, without knowing those basic numbers, who’s your customer avatar? What is your target cost, cost per acquisition? What is your target return on adspend? What do you need to be profitable? And what is your upsell? Like? How are you going to make money over time? If they don’t ask those questions, those are the first warning signs that they’re just going to take your money, run ads, but who knows how they’re going to ever do, I won’t be tracking it.
Ramon Ray 15:32
And as you said, to the simple things, and I wouldn’t want to underline this, I think it’s so important. And this, this seems to go with life as well. I was talking to a friend of mine, who’s a building contractor, we were talking about some things slightly different angles, what we’re saying, but the bottom line, I was saying, dude, ask a lot of questions, let them know that you care about, I think Bathroom Remodeling, whatever they were doing. So that’s kind of what I’m hearing the same thing, because to your point, you know, we’re all want money or something like this. Tyler comes Ramon, can you paint my house? Sure. And I come in, and I painted. I didn’t ask him what color? Is it a girl or boy? I mean, are there kids in the home? I painted your house. So that’s kind of what I’m hearing you say that if I care, I’m gonna say, let me see what your ties look like. I don’t know, whatever painters would ask her what color is your carpet?
Tyler Jorgenson 16:12
Well, yeah, and you’re using that analogy, you wouldn’t hire a painter and expect them to make all of those decisions, right? You need to say, okay, hey, I’ve just I’ve done my research, I’ve decided I want my walls in, you know, eggshell white with a satin finish. And I want the trim this color. And now let me go find the right person to implement that for me, because they’re the expert. Now, if you don’t know those things, and there’s a thing to do before that. And so a lot of times what we do our process flow for agency, is we do a free into like assessment call. From there, if the person is a good fit, we do a strategy call. And that’s a paid service where we map out exactly what they need to do in order to be successful at the end of that call, they have a roadmap of what they need. And they can either hire us, or they can go do it on their own, or they can go hire someone else. But without that roadmap, we won’t be successful. So I won’t, we can’t move forward. And then we move into a build phase, which is getting all those things in place. Once that’s in place, then we move into a scale phase where we actually work on growing. And again, if an agency is willing to start without going through any kind of a strategic plan, then they’re setting up, you know, both businesses to fail.
Ramon Ray 17:18
Yeah, you may have given this advice already, Tyler, but talking to the smallest of the small businesses, I have kind of two and a half audiences in the smartest community, those that are just starting. It could be some people and my heart goes to you that have just been laid off as we take this, you know, this is we’re going through some tough times 20,000 people let go 10,000 so any word for those who are just starting out Tyler, they got their first Wix Squarespace, you know, free WordPress trying to play with the templates. And let’s assume they’re serious about it, you know, because there’s some it’s a hobby and I and I and I respect that. That’s great. But the guy who’s like, I got an idea, or I can do it. Any advice for those just starting out today?
Tyler Jorgenson 17:55
Yeah. Is it okay if I share your my kind of my origin story of this. So when the 2008 financial crisis hit, I was I live in California, I was pretty heavily invested in real estate, I own 17 properties. I owned a mortgage company and a real estate company. So I had a trifecta of chaos happened from 2008 to 2010. We had closed the companies, mostly because of partner situations, but we’ve closed the companies. And I as I mentioned the beginning to call it for kids. I we were waking up to go to our doctor’s appointment to find out what the gender of our fourth kid was going to be. And just before we got in the car, I checked my bank account, negative $17,000 and cashflow near zero, right, like I had had just through a longer story of issues, money was coming out of the bank account that shouldn’t be coming out, right. So I was in a place where it was it I had to make it work. So I used I remember I used at a couple of bucks on a PayPal card from selling stuff on eBay that I used to put gas in the car. And I came home and I was like, I’ve got to figure this out. And so I’d read Tim Ferriss four hour workweek I’d had some ideas on like how to build a business. I literally just followed the steps and built a site that night, I went to bed I woke up and I made 200 bucks. I was like that was
Ramon Ray 19:14
that must be stressful, emotional high.
Tyler Jorgenson 19:17
It was like it was this tiny, tiny ray of light that was like it’s gonna be okay, you’re gonna get through this, right? And so, and I mean, it wasn’t like the end of the storm. It was the light that I could see through the storm, right? And but it became Okay, like, I can do this. And so over the next 30 days, that first e commerce store replaced my income. And I was able to say okay, at least I know I can feed the family each month while I sort out everything else. And I ran that business for almost a decade and sold it. And it by the end of it. We owned Health Canada natural product numbers, we were in wholesale we had, we’d sold 10s of thousands of units like I grew it, but it started with just simply the idea of actually getting it launched. And so the formula I found was simply find a product that’s already selling, make a better version of it, like simply improve it a little bit and then put that out into the market. And although I don’t recommend that for long term growth, like eventually you got to add more complication to that. But if you’re at that, like you said that first early stage, the first thing I want you to know, it’s possible, you can do it. Number two, follow a roadmap, follow a guide, don’t try to just make it up from zero, right? Like there are people who have gone before you learn from them. And then number three is get it launched. You got to ship it, you can’t make $1 if you don’t ship, right, so you got to get you got to get that site live, and then learn, right? You got it from once you’re live, you can see hey, I spent that first hundred dollars on ads, and I didn’t make any money. Now what right and learn and pivot and just adjust. And eventually you’ll get there. But no one starts an expert. And so you’ve got to launch and you got to go.
Ramon Ray 20:54
That’s powerful. Tom would ask you a political question. Are you ready for it?
Unknown Speaker 20:57
Sure. Good luck.
Unknown Speaker 20:59
Yeah. Go ahead. Sure. Show Ramona.
Ramon Ray 21:03
What do you say talent to the perfectionist amongst us? What do you say to the person? Tyler, you don’t understand? I’ve only been working on the site for 18 months, but it’s not perfect. Yeah. I’ve been working on it for three months. But I still don’t like that font. It’s not quite yet. What do you say to that person?
Tyler Jorgenson 21:20
So I have I have come up with a solution to that problem. Okay. So the simple, like, cliche answer that I always say to everyone on my team is done is better than perfect. You have to at least get the project done. But there’s still I’ve had clients that still just get too hung up. But I don’t I don’t have a business card or on this isn’t done. So what I finally said is, launch in beta, call it a beta launch. And this this weird thing that happens where if they understand, oh, we’re in beta, it gives them the permission to not be perfect. And I’ll tell you, the number one issue isn’t the person, it’s the person’s perception that someone’s gonna judge them for it not being perfect. They’re worried that they’re gonna say, hey, check out my new site, right? And someone’s gonna say, well, that’s a weird font, why’d you choose it? They’re not ready for they have no armor to handle the haters, right? I found the only thing that helps me overcome the haters is, well, there’s two things anonymity so they don’t know who I am. That’s easy, because then they can’t find me and to certainty in my purpose. If I don’t have certainty, I will always feel the haters, or I’ll be my worst hater. So if you are like, I’m certain that this is what I’m doing, and it’s going to be a win. Well, then your purpose is clear. But you might be in beta, and you might not be in perfection of the step. And then you just it was if then if you get criticism, if someone says something, you just say, Hey, you know what, we’re in pre launch. We’re in testing right now. But I appreciate your feedback. And you just add it to the list or ignore it.
Ramon Ray 22:51
Well, I’m gonna have to certainty and my purpose. I like that. I think you’re right when you’re not clear it is Tyler, listen, I can talk to you. Probably the next three hours, maybe three and a half hours. But could you please tell us your website where people can reach you and anything got an ask you anything that’s burning, you may have two or three or four more points feel free. But anything I didn’t ask you wanted to share. And definitely feel free liberally let us know how we can contact you. I’m sure a lot of people listening are either at the very, very beginning stages. Maybe you don’t need Tyler today. Take his tips. Go on YouTube. Research yourself, those of you who are growing, and you’re like, you know what, I needed a ninja to help me do this and do it. Tyler and his team probably definitely can help but Tyler Any tips? And yeah, I
Tyler Jorgenson 23:30
asked you that you wanted to touch on? Sure. So the most central place to find me is Tyler jorgenson.com. You can find me there on the internet, I come up pretty easy on Google. I’m not too hard to find on Instagram. I’m biz ninja. And so you can find me there. Those are the two things I honestly the biggest battle cry that I will give is that anybody no matter where you’re at in business, you’re going to feel like you’re stuck. There’s always gonna be those moments where you and I still experienced them. But find a guide. Find what the next step find a mentor. There’s that old saying that is? It costs nothing to ask good advice from a friend. Right? So reach out to people that have done it. Ask them what they should do build that momentum. Action breeds momentum and get it shipped. You’ve got to get launched. If you’ve been you mentioned an example of 18 months of working on something not getting launched. It’s done. You’ve lost it. The project’s over start over, pick a new one and launch it in three days. Like you do not need 18 months, we literally launched a sunglass company from idea logo design products sourced from China sold on the site, first sale, five days, the entire process. You do not need 18 months and I ended up selling that company. You do not need months to launch a project. Just get launched and build it and improve from there.
Ramon Ray 24:48
You are so true. Tyler wise, wise words. Thank you so much for joining us today. Again, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Ramon Ray with smartest immediate smart hustle calm Ramon Ray. And for interviews like this, just check out smart also.com and Tyler again. Wow. Thank you for your time today. Do check out Tyler’s site. Those of you who are growing wanting to grow just check it out. So have a good day and thanks for listening to smart hustle podcast.
Tyler Jorgenson 25:08
Thank you for tuning in to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. What you didn’t hear was one more very important question that Tyler asks each guest if you want to be a fly on the wall when the real secrets are shared, go to biz ninja.com slash VIP and get your access today. Remember to subscribe so that you don’t miss any future episodes. And our one last favor. If this episode was meaningful to you, please share this podcast with a fellow entrepreneur so they can grow along with us is ninjas. It’s your turn to go out and do something
